VOL.8, NO. 8
EMPLOYMENT PROBLEM OF 1931
1565
to be dug up later and become too prominent to be explained away. If one can learn anything of the prospective employer's wishes and plans, the problem of selection and presentation of data is much simplified. If not, i t is a safe rule to bear in mind that an employer has problems of his own and that his interest, if any, in you is based on the hope that you can help him solve some of them. Often applicants are inclined to be too egotistical or too modest, and either may be as bad as the other. The line between good salesmanship and egotism is as hard to define as the one between modesty and diffidence, yet both must be carefully drawn by the individual himself. Like most distinctions of the kind, each person must drawn them for himself for after all it is the way these things are done that make up one's personality. To sum up these random thoughts for the jobless: 1. Be sure possible employers know you are looking for work and that your record is available to them when they want it. 2. Remember a prospective employer is more interested in what you can do for him than in anything else. 3. Be sure your story of yourself accurately represents you. 4. Don't create skeletons in your closet by trying to hide things which may later come up to plague you. .5. Remember that if you have no confidence in yourself, no one else can have. 6. Modesty is a becoming virtue but must be displayed in moderation. 7. Never be over-egotistical. You will surely be found out. 8. Study your prospective employer's problems and keep them first in your mind when presenting your own case. 9. Few men ever get a job solely because they need or want one. 10. An employer is primarily interested in getting full value for the wages he pays you. Advancement must be earned, whatever expectations either the employer or the employee may have a t the start. These suggestions seem to be wholly self-evident and axiomatic but the number of even professional workers who totally disregard such simple truths is astounding. Careful following of them will save much disappointment in so seriously competitive a time as the present.
Drawing No Aid to Science Students. The drawing of specimens in laboratory notebooks, a time-honored method of impressing the structure of plants and animals on the mind of the elementary hiology student, has been tried and found wanting by Lourene Taylor, instructor in plant biology at the University of Oregon. The trial was made on 178 students, 91 of whom mad? their own drawings. For the others ready-made drawings were provided which the student had merely to label correctly. It was found that the students who did not draw pot along a little better on the average than those who labored with the original drawings.-Science Semicc
